Just My LuckPOOR Lindsay Lohan. It’s bad enough that her new romantic comedy, Just My Luck<$>, was barely screened in time for critics to review it before opening day. Now that we’ve seen the movie, it turns out she’s not even the star.That would be the generic British pop band McFly (oddly named after Michael J. Fox’s character in Back to the Future<$>, but whatever) for whom Just My Luck plays like an infomercial.

These guys are in this thing constantly, singing the same two songs at a bowling alley, at a recording studio, at a sold-out Times Square concert, writes Christy Lemire.

In between their myriad performances, each of which sounds just like the last, LL squeezes in opportunities to show off her gifts for timing and physical comedy. Despite what we know about Lohan’s off-screen antics — and by now we know way too much — on-screen, she’s an undeniable, irresistible talent.

That’s why it’s such a disappointment that her first grown-up role is essentially a remake of Freaky Friday, the remake of which made her a star in 2003.

Lohan plays Ashley Albright, a confident young Manhattanite with incredibly good luck who magically swaps fortunes with Jake Hardin (Chris Pine), a guy plagued with perennially bad luck, after kissing him on the dance floor at a masquerade ball.

Loud, overblown mishaps ensue.

This should come as no surprise considering the director, Donald Petrie, who previously inflicted upon the unsuspecting movie-going public other overbearing romantic comedies (Miss Congeniality, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and lame comedies based on TV shows (Richie Rich, My Favorite Martian<$>). Subtlety is a concept with which he’s apparently unfamiliar.

And for some reason it took five people to come up with the story and screenplay — baffling since it’s pretty simplistic, and as we mentioned earlier, not entirely original. Ashley’s heel breaks, her dress rips (which is also a shame, since the famous fashionista Lohan gets to drape her frame in fabulous clothes). She repeatedly ends up soaking wet (a cab splashes her, she gets caught in the rain). She loses her job, she gets arrested, she gets beat up in jail.

It is extreme and, eventually, redundant how awful things get for her. Worse yet, none of the gags is funny. But she is a tad more likeable, though, in her miserably unlucky state. When everything was going her way, she was insufferably perky.

Jake, meanwhile, was the one ripping his clothes and getting splashed by cabs. He used to work as the janitor at a bowling alley, but post-kiss he’s suddenly riding in the back of a chauffeured town car when he signs the band he manages — that’s right, McFly — to an inordinately speedy record deal. (Pine, who resembles a slightly nerdy Rob Lowe, exhibits a bit more substance than the average rom-com hero, a role that’s always secondary to the starlet anyway.)

Just My Luck<$> is the worst kind of comedy — one that assumes the audience can’t think for itself, and therefore feels the need to punctuate each sight gag with obnoxiously jaunty music. That is, when McFly isn’t playing its signature brand of frat-boy rock.

Just My Luck, a 20th Century Fox, is rated PG-13 for some brief sexual references. Running time: 100 minutes. One and a half stars.<$>

* * *The Da Vinci Code <$>— Christians are outraged and albinos are offended and people around the world who haven’t even seen the film are angry simply, it seems, in preparation for being angry. But everyone can just take a deep breath and calm down. Because the The Da Vinci Code <$>is finally coming to theatres, and its biggest sin has nothing to do with the supposedly blasphemous nature of the source material, Dan Brown’s blockbuster page turner. Rather, its sin is of omission. Director Ron Howard’s adaptation feels cursory and rushed. Then again, maybe Howard was doomed from the start. In taking an intricate book about a centuries-old religious mystery that’s sold 60 million copies, Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman — with whom he spun gold with 2001’s Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind — inevitably had to trim something. What they’ve jettisoned, however, is the tension. As played by long-time Howard favourite Tom Hanks and French actress Audrey Tautou, the novel’s heroes Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu proceed from one puzzle to the next with such speed and ease, it’s as if they’re high-school kids on a scavenger hunt, looking for a stop sign and a No. 2 pencil. PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, some nudity thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content. 148 minutes. Two stars. — Christy Lemire